4D5 charts
Getting a better bell curve to 20
**UPDATE**
It’s been pointed out to me that calling this a d5 is a mistake it should be noted as a d6-1. The reason I called it a d5 is just to avoid anyone thinking they had to do math (simply turning the 6 into a 0 on the dice accomplishes this) but there is a fundamental difference between a d5 {1,2,3,4,5} and a d6-1 {0,1,2,3,4,5}. I’m going to leave the rest of the article as is however please do note this difference as well.
I had a desire a while back to have a better bell curve to cover the range most used in TTRPGs which is 1-20. My solution is to have the options go from 0-20 and what I’m calling a 5-sided die. What’s a 5 sided die? It’s your normal 6-sided die you have in your dice bag but the 6 is now a 0.
The image above shows how nice of a baseline bell curve 4d5 gives, as well as some options to increase or decrease the difficulty of any given roll.
This allows you to make roll charts that can be very extreme on either end due to how rarely they will appear. This could also be an interesting way to get some of the swings out of character creation as well - for example, if I compare the 4d5 vs the very common methods of character creation:
ST: 2,5,5,3 = 4d5: 15. 4d6KH: 13. 3d6: 12
INT: 3,3,2,4 = 4d5: 12. 4d6KH: 10. 3d6: 8
WIS: 3,5,3,3 = 4d5: 14. 4d6KH: 11. 3d6: 11
DEX: 5,2,3,6(0) = 4d5: 10. 4d6KH: 14. 3d6: 10
CON: 6(0),4,4,4 = 4d5: 12. 4d6KH: 14. 3d6: 14
CHA: 6(0),1,2,1 = 4d5: 4. 4d6KH: 9. 3d6: 9
On average 4d5 characters would have slightly worse stats but they would be much more centered around the normal man level of 10. I’d likely make 13,15,17 be your +1,2,3 and 7,5,3 be your -1,2,3 on the stat bonus side of things.
You can find actual 5-sided dice out on the market however due to their shape they are rarely ever mathematically fair, and they simply cost more than your bog standard D6 were you to either sharpie in a 0 over top or cover the 6 with a small sticker.
What do you think of the d5 idea? Would it work better for random encounter charts or could you see using this as a character generation method?